Just a quick reminder to fellow blenderheads that the deadline is loooooming, check the announcement here . I’ve been helping out organize the submissions, so I thought it would be a nice reminder to the readers here to send their potential award winning shorts lickety-split.

We now have Blender 2.5 builds in our downloads page for OSX 10.6.1 and Ubuntu GNU/Linux 9.10. We will be updating the builds periodically and blogging those updates here. A Windows 7 version will be up soon, hopefully.

Hi

I made couple tutorials covering  the basic points about hands and fingers in general, and how to model a basic finger in Blender. I will also make a tutorial about modeling a full hand when I have some time next week

You can watch them here

http://www.vimeo.com/freeartsculture/videos

Hopefully this should be helpful to some people.

We made an SVN repo for Rigamarule, to track changes and invite outside contribution and eyeballs.

You can find the repo at: http://projects.freefac.org/rigamarule/

to check it out:

svn co http://projects.freefac.org/rigamarule

Current plan is as follows:

- small fixes for rescaning marulez.py, resetting stretch-to bones rest length, and example .blend templates.

- better template error handling

- new rules based on tube needs

- port to 2.5

- better interactivity

- add support for external deformer/rig objects.

I’m also inviting external contribution, so if you’re interested in the project let me know and I’ll give you an SVN account.

Even though tube is not a ‘traditional’ narrative, there are elements of narrative in it – themes, structure, character, etc.
It’s of a high importance that everything comes through and works; that the audience can care about the character, that the themes are not so deeply buried that they are completely opaque, and that the flow of events is graspable.

The current animatic suggests to me that viewers unfamiliar with the epic tube is based on are going to be too challenged to piece together the narrative structure, and might end up feeling left out. Having such an epic work to base on allowed us to make great visual ‘flights of fancy’ unfettered by a traditional stucture, but I think that we must do both- have a great visual piece and still engage ‘cold’ viewers in the character and theme.

The good news is that this is the best time to do story changes: production has not begun yet and changes are practically free (they will become increasingly more expensive once we get into production). So now is the time to get radical. Nothing is sacred. Everything is permitted.

I’m chuffed to announce the beginning of fateh’s traditional ‘Birthweek’ celebrations.. There will festivities, merriments, sweetmeats and the traditional “defenestration of the salmon” in honor of the glorious occasion. It is said that on the day of her birth, miracles happened: the blind became sighted, new stars appeared in the heavens and processed cheese turned to the finest cheddar.
So happy birthday, and thanks for saving the story (among other things)

Hello from Sofia / Bulgaria!
I’m here teaching at Tosmi two blender classes back to back, and having a great time. We had a great Siggraph experience, Jarred, Fateh and I spent many hours driving to the conference, hanging at the blender booth, meeting all the groovy blenderfolk (you know who you are!) and then midnight hacking on the teaser.
After returning back home, we had a scant few days to re-do some of the glitchy bits, make a ‘director’s cut’ teaser, render, and then rush out here to the EU before encoding it for your viewing pleasure.
Without further ado I present… the second teaser:

Credits go to Gianmichele (character animation) Jarred (massive amounts of textures, modelling, and matte painting), Jamal (modeling and materials), Jan (awesome music and mix), Thomas (awesome SFX), Colin Levy! (who kindly tweaked the comp on one of the shots at the blender booth), Kursad (texture painting) and Jean-Sebastian (modeling). Thanks to Chris, Fateh, and the folks at the animation meeting for the great feedback/ideas/critique. I did a little bit of everything, and am responsible for anything bad. (edit: can’t believe I didn’t mention redo’s awesome roach concepts)

Oh and finally, for the masochists: a high rez ogg video link : HD teaser2

PS: I’ve of course updated the media page with the second teaser.
EDIT: added .mp4 version to the video for safari users

For those of us who weren’t at Siggraph (sadly), the Tube trailer was shown at the Blender booth. It wasn’t completely finished, as that is what we are doing right now. Hopefully we’ll have it up and online very soon. But in the meantime, here are a few screens from the trailer. Enjoy!

Jarred, Fateh and I just got back (by car) from Siggraph/New Orleans. We had a great time meeting CG and Blender people, including tube contributors Jason, Sam, Martin and others. Still exhausted from the drive and with a lot of catchup to do.
We finished the teaser and showed it on the exhibition floor; however, 4 a.m comps and renders deserve a second going, I’ll be making a ‘director’s cut’ before posting it online.
So, be expecting posts about siggraph, the teaser, and rigamarule updates coming soon.
cheers
Bassam

With impeccable timing, our main production server decided to go to sleep last night. For now, this means no SVN, Helga, file sharing or rendering… it is a dark time for the project.
Luckily we have Chris taking care of us, he’ll take a look today and assess the damage. If it seems bad, I’ll migrate our work to an off-site location.

To those of you who have been nagging me about switching to a distributed VCS all this time.. well, yes, I guess this is a good use case- though to be honest, it’s the first time I’ve wanted one.

I’m pretty sure there are backups/etc. And indeed, we have all our working copies as backup, so, we are delayed, but not defeated!! muahahaha!

EDIT: Looks like Chris ( Perry ) reset the server and it’s back up again… no clue as to why it went down though.